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You seem to be suggesting that basic physics would say you can't unbalance someone bigger than you who's attacking you???? I can assure you that's definitely not the case! In fact it's exactly why some of us find it interesting!

(Also I don't entirely get the point of the analogy, because if someone is an immovable concrete block, I can just walk away and I've won from my point of view. It's kind of a boring situation).

first, the push model with arms straight out or bend. shoulders are the weakest points for force conduction, so locked you arms straight out, would put stress on the shoulders beyond its physical design. bending arms, especially, the elbows touching the body, would distribute the forces to the body and lessen the stress at the shoulder joints. it's a sound biomechanical/physics model.

there is nothing wrong to go with both theory and applied. one approach is to trying things first then come up with theory to explain/model it. the other approach is to come up with the theory, then experiment to either prove or disprove or improve the theory. some folks like the experiment first; other folks, theory first.

me, i liked to do both, at the same time. left hand for theory, right hand for applied. waving left hand and said watch this hand, then kick with the right foot. oh wait! there supposes to be a throw somewhere in here. hey, if you kick hard enough, the other person might throw up.

last i checked, newtonian physics still applied on earth. i was reminded this morning in the shower, what goes up, must comes down. damn cold water!

You seem to be suggesting that basic physics would say you can't unbalance someone bigger than you who's attacking you???? I can assure you that's definitely not the case! In fact it's exactly why some of us find it interesting!

(Also I don't entirely get the point of the analogy, because if someone is an immovable concrete block, I can just walk away and I've won from my point of view. It's kind of a boring situation).

I don't mean to imply that it was somehow a prescriptive method of unbalancing, rather to illustrate power differences can matter, that these power differences can be created because you have put in a lot of time solo training that someone else has not (using methods requiring little to no scientific literacy), and that pretty much all of us are starting off severely unbalanced to begin with.

So, learning first and foremost how to unbalance someone can seem rather backwards from that point of view. Learning how to not be a walking collection of imbalances can seemingly undo/invalidate many years/decades of the most well-intentioned and earnest training of most of us, because all someone has to do to point out our flaws is to come in contact with us. There really are dragons out there.

To me learning not to get hurt (punched hard or arm broken or grabbed and dragged somewhere) seems like step one. No amount of training will make me immune to a single hard strike from someone 1.5 times my weight and a foot taller than me, so not getting hit seems like first priority.

Both unbalancing others and not letting them unbalance you seem like they should come lower down than that.

Thanks for explaining, though, I do agree that many of us are often very unbalanced.

To me learning not to get hurt (punched hard or arm broken or grabbed and dragged somewhere) seems like step one. No amount of training will make me immune to a single hard strike from someone 1.5 times my weight and a foot taller than me, so not getting hit seems like first priority.

If anybody expresses doubt to me about Kamae, I generally go into a wrestler's crouch and show how similar it is. Shinzentai and Kamae are not that different, either. But many other Aikido styles don't use it, so YMMV.

Dear Bill,
Wrestlers crouch is more akin to jigotai, not shizentai.From my experience Jigotai is not applicable on Aikido.Of course some Judo masters like Kenshiro Abbe did not advocate this posture.Jigotai may well have been stolen from Sumo?? Cheers, Joe.

I don't mean to imply that it was somehow a prescriptive method of unbalancing, rather to illustrate power differences can matter, that these power differences can be created because you have put in a lot of time solo training that someone else has not (using methods requiring little to no scientific literacy), and that pretty much all of us are starting off severely unbalanced to begin with.

So, learning first and foremost how to unbalance someone can seem rather backwards from that point of view. Learning how to not be a walking collection of imbalances can seemingly undo/invalidate many years/decades of the most well-intentioned and earnest training of most of us, because all someone has to do to point out our flaws is to come in contact with us. There really are dragons out there.

Dammit. Yes. One of the reasons why I am waiting to be sold on a new teaching methodology with this stuff is for this reason... Ultimately, we are teaching people how to unbalance their partners and hoping they are athletic enough to not to be [too] unbalanced themselves in the process. Through the learning process, we correct and encourage self-evaluation and hope our students realize they are also unbalanced and consideration self-correctional behavior to be part of their instruction. Both instructional formats hoping that our students we'll get the message and become receptive to that conversation that eventually comes up... "don't try to do anything to your partner." "What? 5 years you've been showing me kata where I am instructed to do something, now you're telling me not to? F^*k this, I'm doing tai bo."

The converse of that conversation is this one... "Hi, welcome to aikido. You have terrible posture and you're one step above sloppily hurling your body in a general direction as your primary method of locomotion. For the next 5 years, we're going to concentrate on your problem areas, which seem to involve 'being'."

"don't try to do anything to your partner." "What? 5 years you've been showing me kata where I am instructed to do something, now you're telling me not to? F^*k this, I'm doing tai bo."

don't knock taibo. i was taking taibo some years ago, and the class were full with older ladies, i.e. much older than i was, and they kicked my ass. i was sucking wind after 10 min. they kept on going like energizer buny.

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The converse of that conversation is this one... "Hi, welcome to aikido. You have terrible posture and you're one step above sloppily hurling your body in a general direction as your primary method of locomotion. For the next 5 years, we're going to concentrate on your problem areas, which seem to involve 'being'."

but standing around not doing much isn't sexy. you need skirts swirling, bodies flying, ki force extending, where men can be men, and women can be men, and men can be women, and dogs can be cats, and we all can hold hands singing kumbaya.

Dammit. Yes. One of the reasons why I am waiting to be sold on a new teaching methodology with this stuff is for this reason... Ultimately, we are teaching people how to unbalance their partners and hoping they are athletic enough to not to be [too] unbalanced themselves in the process. Through the learning process, we correct and encourage self-evaluation and hope our students realize they are also unbalanced and consideration self-correctional behavior to be part of their instruction. Both instructional formats hoping that our students we'll get the message and become receptive to that conversation that eventually comes up... "don't try to do anything to your partner." "What? 5 years you've been showing me kata where I am instructed to do something, now you're telling me not to? F^*k this, I'm doing tai bo."

The converse of that conversation is this one... "Hi, welcome to aikido. You have terrible posture and you're one step above sloppily hurling your body in a general direction as your primary method of locomotion. For the next 5 years, we're going to concentrate on your problem areas, which seem to involve 'being'."

What if the new teaching methodology, the only one that really works for it, is to simply not teach them any ai-ki-do for the first six months or more and make them focus on retaining their balance and dealing with forces acting against it? It may well be the only way to see any appreciable change. Is anyone that wants aikido going to buy that?

To be absolutely direct and clear, I do not believe empty force is in any way what O'Sensei was doing, and people who peddle it - regardless of what they claim to be doing - are at best charlatans, and at worst actually believe in it themselves. That does not mean you can't cause an opponent to react before contact based on what you do, but there are sane limits to this and empty force sorts of things (endemic unfortunately to most of the ki/chi arts) are definitely outside of those sane limits. I interpreted your posting of the original link to it as some sort of unfortunate (mis-)interpretation of what I was saying earlier.

The reason I posted those Shioda videos is because he illustrated the point I was trying to make earlier, that there is an underlying quality to what he is doing that goes hidden in the techniques, but is visible (and unfortunately a bit too palpable to the uke in the last one) in those particular choice moments. Without that quality, he may as well just be flapping his arms around and people in an effort to reproduce it come up with stuff like, uh, empty force as some sort of misguided interpretation of what he was doing. There is a difference between an uke trying to get out of the way of what he knows to be truly an oncoming freight train vs. collusive movement designed to make a paper tiger look better.

To be absolutely direct and clear, I do not believe empty force is in any way what O'Sensei was doing

That's fine with me, even if Ueshiba sometimes did this kind of 'tricks'. Others may believe he was channeling kami, some believe he was a mentalist... there is a lot of different beliefs about what O Sensei was into.

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I interpreted your posting of the original link to it as some sort of unfortunate (mis-)interpretation of what I was saying earlier.

I was addressing (in jest) Basia's post where she said 'not getting hit seems like first priority'.

How do you pull off shihonage on someone much shorter than you without a nice deep jigotai or switching to suwari waza? My wife and I have a 16" height difference so I get stuck with this a lot

Paul

i saw Ellis Amdur put on a shihonage to an very short uke, much shorter than him. i thought Ellis would need to get down on his stomach to do it, but he just did it. it was the smoothest shihonage that i had seen. most folks do shihonage with uke's arm stretch out or up or side way or in every direction, but Ellis's approach is like getting uke to do an arm curl. doesn't raise uke's alarm until the very end. there is also a spanking waza for stiffed back uke.